violence against women

11th February 2015, BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Indonesian officials have dropped a plan to require female students to pass virginity tests in order to graduate from high school and apologised after sparking a public outcry, human rights campaigners said.

Shirkat Gah - Women’s Resource Centre, the Institute for Women’s Empowerment (IWE),and Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) have today announced the launch of a new feminist leadership web portal as part of their Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Development for Democratisation (WELDD) programme. The portal will act as a virtual pathway to feminist activists, organisations, and dreamers of a gender -just and egalitarian world. The portal is a space to share useful resources, a forum for sharing experiences and holding discussions and debates about how to nurture feminist leadership that is transformative and sustainable. WELDD is committed to Global South knowledge production, and will hold a space for theoretical/conceptual explorations emerging from Muslim majority contexts in Arabic, Bahasa, English, French and Urdu.

The law would prohibit the justice system to question relatives of criminal defendants. It will deprive Afghan women and girls access to justice against relatives who commit domestic violence, forced them to marry or even sell them. Only the President can stop this law that has already been passed by the Parliament from being enforced, and he is due to sign it in the coming days.

Kirstie Trup and Katie Gee, both 18 and from London, had acid thrown on their faces, chests and hands. The island's Police Commissioner Musa Ali Musa told the BBC that there was "no prime suspect" for the attack. He said that a lot of people had been questioned

Three European women went on trial in Tunis on Wednesday for holding a topless anti-Islamic protest, and their French lawyer said he was confident they would escape prison despite the threat of jail sentences.